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april 6 to july 27, 2024 pulpbadanna zack edward poitras gathie falk mia feuer miya turnbull susan andrews grace

April 6 to July 27, 2024 | Gallery A Featuring the work of Badanna Zack, Edward Poitras, Gathie Falk, Mia Feuer, Miya Turnbull, and Susan Andrews Grace Curated by Arin Fay ©2024 Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. ISBN: 978-1-9990446-9-5 Printed in Canada by Hall Printing. First printing 2024. Publication design by Stephanie Delnea, Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery All images ©2024 by Bobbi Barbarich unless otherwise stated. Published by: Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery 502 Vernon Street, Nelson, British Columbia, Canada V1L 4E7 nelsonmuseum.ca With generous support from: PULP

3pulp05 curatorial statement 12 badanna zack 16 edward poitras 20 gathie falk 24 mia feuer 32 miya turnbull 36 susan andrews grace

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pulp 5 PULP with Susan Andrews Grace, Edward Poitras, Badanna Zack, Gathie Falk, Mia Feuer and Miya Turnbull. These artists range in age across an impressive timescale from mid-career to nonagenarian (a person between 90 and 99), and various points in between. They hail from coast to coast; British Columbia (Grace and Falk), Saskatchewan (Poitras), Ontario (Zack), Manitoba (Feuer), and Nova Scotia (Turnbull). These artists all utilize the medium of papier mâché and/or sculptural paper from diverse approaches, historical influences and within the evolution of their respective practice. The works extend from floor to ceiling, in determined isolation and deliberate array, with monochromatic understatement interrupted by pulsing colour, and abstraction counterbalanced by realism, revolving around both personal and universal themes. The diversity of the PULP exhibition, like all the medium-centric exhibitions the Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery has hosted before (WORD, LOST THREAD, THROWN, SHUTTER), speaks to a curated conversation that is unique to the group format; to find the creative poles of expression when artists are given common ground. The history of paper, papier mâché, and structural paper has a legacy that is boundless in application and cultural connections: communication, commodification, currency, cartography, con-struction.... I was surprised in my research how often structural three-dimensional paper was used as architectural ornamentation during certain eras, both decorative and functional. It is an agent of both civilization and colonization and has been an integral part of artistic expression, in one form or another, for thousands of years the world over, China (as far back as 200 BC), Egypt, Japan, Kashmir, Imperial China, Middle and Far East, Europe, Mexico, and myriad other places. This material has been used in the making of everything from death masks to furniture to knick-knacks. Contemporary art has many examples of artists like Marcel Duchamp (1925), Eva Hesse (1966), Antonia Eiriz (1970), and Roberto Benavidez (2023) utilizing papier mâché and sculptural paper to parody, reproduce, and celebrate the world around them. Paper, like all materials that are mass-produced, has an entrenched and omnipresent history, full of both beauty and destruction, utilitarianism and artistic iterations. Susan Andrews Grace’s Snow and Ink, Edward Poitras’ Small Matters, Badanna Zack’s A Collection of Sewing Machines, Gathie Falk’s Lucy & David, Mia Feuer’s Tender, and Miya Turnbull’s Self Portrait Masks all explore concepts within their respective assemblages and installations. The medium, materiality and potential of paper is the organizing principle of PULP, and it is the artists that push the boundaries, both leaning into traditional usage and challenging the material in fascinating and unexpected ways. curatorial statement

6 pulp Susan’s otherworldly and earthy constructions and canvases speak to a long and multifaceted view of the history of paper and the industry it spawned, full of wood, wasps, wonder, and sorrow, with titles such as Silk Snow Drift and Martin Luther / Gutenberg. The subtle and understated colour palette underscores a dissonant story told in deft strokes. So much of Susan’s visual work echos the power of her poetry, the lines of verse evoking the white-on-white works, and the shadows and space in between. Knot Silken knots, like motherlessness, are worst— untwisted floss tangled even by breath. – Hypatia’s Wake Susan’s installation creates a magical and contemplative space in the gallery, full of light and shadow, ethereal nests, and unlimited layers. Small Matters by Edward Poitras is an exercise in elemental forms and monochromatic understatement, with no small irony and minimalistic strokes representing the epic scale of the subject matter. Like so much of Edward’s work there is the concept of borders – boundaries, reserves, cells, portals – creating a carved off space which speaks to both an absence and an inextinguishable presence. The white walls of the gallery space conspire to obscure the letters and language, complicit as a colonial structure, the words staggered and falling to the ground. Poitras builds a memorial to historical Indigenous massacres, as told in Dee Brown’s book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: “I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there are no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls.” – Ten Bears1 1Ten Bears is the Tamparika Comanches chief, in a speech to peace commissioners at Medicine Lodge Council in 1867. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown Both Gathie Falk and Badanna Zack, senior and seminal artists, transform everyday objects into extraordinary monuments in respective ways. Born in 1928 and 1933 respectively, these artists established themselves in an era where mobility for women in every industry was limited, making their accomplishments relevant and inspiring, especially given the active studio practice of artists in their 90s. Gathie, a colourist by nature with an eye to the splendor and importance of ordinary things, has a way of making her work both personal and reminiscent, like she is creating set pieces from a collective dream. Not one to wax eloquent about universal themes and deep relevance, there is still a feeling that a feminist agenda is at play, literally, in the elevation and celebration of domestic wares. Early performance work like Red Angel (1972) found her standing endlessly in front of a washing machine. “It speaks to all the central issues in her artistic practice: objects and memories of personal significance, music, wit and ordinary activities, ceramic fruits, found objects, repetition and repurposing of components from previous works, dreams, and the juxtaposition of what at first appear to be disjointed elements.” – GEORGIANA UHLYARIK, AGO, FREDRIK S. EATON CURATOR, CANADIAN ART

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pulp 9 Badanna Zack employs many of the same techniques as Falk, regarding recognizable objects that are often overlooked or unseen, but with a more critical approach. Zack is incredibly skilled at achieving realistic effect through the medium of papier mâché, creating Singer sewing machines, skulls, and stairs, amongst other things, but she is ‘breaking the fourth wall’ in doing so, drawing attention to the craft and reveling in the materiality being used. The decision to not entirely obscure the process, to allow the newspaper to be read and the cardboard to retain its barcode and wares, draws one in, juxtaposing the realism with a manufactured consent. Mia Feuer is a creator of large-scale sculptural installations, Tender being the most recent. The work is literally steeped in Mia’s Jewish cultural relevance, with garlic skins functioning as the bulk of the pulp used to create her mystical goalie mashup. There is a playfulness but a gravity to the symbolism being used, an awareness that this sculpture and all its significance has evolved over the course of escalating atrocities happening in Gaza. Brought to bear is Mia’s rootedness in her culture, her empowerment as a hockey player/goalie and her embodiment of a mother. These things coalesce into a fierce and fascinating magic. Adele Wise-man, a fellow Winnipeg artist, and kindred spirit, wrote the following as a response to the depression and World War II: They could see for themselves the only magic we made was the same magic they were making. We drew the same circles around our houses with charcoal to keep out the sickness. We too hung cloves of garlic and lumps of camphor in sachets, around our necks for they have great strength in them to ward off plagues. You can smell their power. – Adele Wiseman, ‘Crackpot’ The same power and magic permeate Mia’s work; both artists are responding to different wars, but in the end, they are the same. The masks of Miya Turnbull are maybe the most traditional or ubiquitous of the papier mâché arts, and yet here again is evidence of how artists can so brilliantly subvert and invert what is expected. The traditional form of mask making is contemporized, as it becomes a tool and symbol for the artist to grapple with not only her mixed Japanese Canadian heritage but the concept of identity generally, of ego and plurality and artifice. The masks we wear and those that society imposes upon us. PULP ranges around the gallery in what feels like a counterclockwise conversation between long-lost friends. There is a sense of gravity and memory amongst the cast shadows and constructed paper edifices that unify these artists, with flashpoints of vibrant red, and calming white, that create an echo and ebb and flow. It is a privilege and a challenge to bring such diversity together, for each work to claim space and speak its own truth while also contributing to a larger conversation about process and perspective. PULP accomplishes this balancing act in unique and spectacular ways. Thanks to the artists for their generosity of spirit, vision and trust in this collective process. Arin Fay, Curator Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery

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12 pulp Photo courtesy of United Contemporary, 1985. badanna zack Photo courtesy of United Contemporary, 2022.

pulp 13 Badanna Zack is a sculptor and conceptual artist born in Montreal, QC, and now lives and works in Toronto, ON. Zack emerged as a sculpture artist during the Minimalist movement, from which she rebelled against to emerge as a unique sculptor with a bold and dissenting voice. Renowned as a provocateur of Canadian art, Zack is known for her papier mâché, soft sculpture, and large-scale replicas of everyday objects. Zack’s work has been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, spanning from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s. Notable institutions and galleries that have exhibited Zack’s work includes Oakwood Contemporary Gallery, Plug In ICA, the Belgium Sculpture Biennial among many others. Zack’s pieces can be found in collections such as Douglas College, NJ, Rutgers University, NJ, Concordia University, the Art Galley of Hamilton, the Oakville Centennial Gallery, Lynnwood Arts Centre and numerous private collections. Zack studied architecture at McGill University and practiced as an architect for 10 years before obtaining her B.A. of Fine Arts from Concordia University in 1964 and her M.F.A. in Fine Arts from Rutgers University, New Jersey.

14pulpa collection of sewing machines (2017) Cardboard, painted papier mâché This piece is based on an earlier installation, entitled Homage to My Grandfather, in which Badanna Zack installed Singer sewing machines that were created to scale and constructed from burlap sacks and exhibited at three Ontario public museums in 1994. Zack’s grandfather, who passed away in the late 1980s, was a tailor and worked in a garment factory. Growing up in a multi-generational household in Montreal, Zack had a close relationship with her grandfather, and her work often includes references to clothing, shoes, and sewing machines in his memory. A Collection of Sewing Machines is an installation made from papier-mâché and painted cardboard, a material used by the artist from the late 1990s onwards. Her tendency to recreate familiar and inanimate objects to scale demonstrates her interest and amusement in employing a material (newspaper, cardboard) that is also recognizable, but bears no relationship to the object that is being replicated.

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16 pulp edward poitras Photo by Don Hall, 1984.

pulp 17 Edward Poitras is a painter, sculptor, photographer, set designer, and performance artist, who has been included in numerous major exhibitions of contemporary Indigenous art since 1980. Born in Regina, SK, Poitras is a member of the Gordon First Nation, where he currently lives and works. He studied in the Indian Art Program at the Saskatchewan Indigenous Cultural Centre, Saskatoon, under the direction of Sarain Stump (1974) and in the art program at Manitou College, La Macaza, QC, led by Domingo Cisneros (1976). Poitras taught at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College (now First Nations University of Canada) and at the University of Manitoba. Poitras was the first Indigenous artist to represent Canada at the prestigious Venice Biennale (Venice, Italy, 1995). His work can be found in the collections of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Canadian Museum of History, the National Gallery of Canada, Remai Modern, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, and the Saskatchewan Arts Board. In 2002 he was a recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

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pulp 19 small matters (1985) Nails, wire, paper, vinyl type On loan from the The Mendel Art Gallery Collection at Remai Modern. Purchased, 1989. For this installation Edward Poitras crumped pages from the book Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian Story of the American West and placed them within wire and nail enclosures. The book was written in 1970 by American historian and novelist Dee Brown, who chronicled the history of displacement and ethno-cide faced by Indigenous tribes in the United States. The book is critically acclaimed for its condemnation of the effects of American expansionism on Indigenous culture and life. Historical references, along with a list of specific groups of people who were affected, are inscribed on the wall in white vinyl. Small Matters is perhaps one of Poitras’ best known works, and a haunting lesson in the power of subtlety. Pages of the book are crumpled and wedged into tiny fences resembling reservation plots. Below each is white vinyl lettering that names a notable Indian massacres - Summer Snow, Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, and Sand Creek. Falling towards the floor and nearly out of sight are the names of some of the Indigenous tribes that became extinct as a result of the effects of colonialism. As Helga Pakasaar expresses in her curatorial essay for the 1988 exhibition Revisions at Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff Centre for the Arts), “the delicate presence and miniature size of this memorial sculpture intensifies a sense of disappearance, forcing an engaged look at what are not small matters…Poitras’ compelling objects are expressions of a personal and political response to the genocide of Native peoples.” (Excerpt from: Unapologetic: Acts of Survivance January 12 – March 25, 2017 McMaster Museum of Art by Rhéanne Chartrand Aboriginal Curatorial Resident McMaster Museum of Art)

20 pulp “Gathie Falk At Home— Frozen Robin,” 1969. Photograph by Michael de Courcy from The Intermedia Catalogue. gathie falk

pulp 21 Photo courtesy of the Equinox Gallery, 2021.

22 pulp lucy & david (2021) Papier mâché, paint On loan from the Equinox Gallery Over the last 60 years, Gathie Falk has meticulously transformed — through her seemingly inexhaustible imagination — objects of everyday experience into extraordinary things. Working in a variety of media that include performance art, sculpture, ceramics, painting, and drawing, Falk has produced works that feel surreal and dreamlike, reinventing clothing, fruit, plants, shoes, or baseball caps into objects of much greater significance. Although these objects are relatable in their familiarity, it is the personal symbols they carry – not the universal – that are of interest to Falk.

pulp 23 Gathie Falk has had over 40 solo exhibitions across Canada, and her work is represented in many public and private collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, BC); the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON), the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Kleinberg, ON); and the Musee d’Art Contemporain (Montreal, QC). She was appointed into the Order of Canada in 1997 and the Order of British Columbia in 2002. In 2013 she received the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. Gathie Falk lives and works in Vancouver, BC.

24 pulp Mia Feuer in her petroleum skating rink at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 2015. Photo by Darrow Montgomery/Washington City Paper mia feuer

pulp 25 Born in Winnipeg, MB, Mia Feuer is the great-great-granddaughter of a Ukrainian born rabbi and philosopher who struck a deal with the Jewish Canadian Colonization Association in 1904 to initiate a Jewish farm colony on stolen Cree and Nakota land (Saskatchewan). She is a research-driven, mixed media sculptor that explores questions relating to synthetic materials as the embodiment of trauma, motherhood in the Anthropocene era, and if her sculptural and spiritual practice are the same entity. She is currently an associate professor of sculpture at California College of the Arts on Ohlone land (San Francisco), mother to eight year old Galileo, and goalie for the Oakland Night Herons.

26 pulp tender (2024) Steel, pulped garlic skins, paint, polyurethane, assorted hardware The Talmud - the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (halakha) and Jewish theology suggests that it is not possible to begin the practice of “Binah” (Hebrew word meaning deep understanding) until age 40. It is believed that once the age of 40 is reached, the mystical concepts and complexities within the ancient Kabbalahistic dimension of Judaism can begin to be accessed. Tender is part of a new body of work inspired by Mia Feuer’s 2023 fellowship with LABA—a Laboratory for Jewish Arts and Culture, the study of ancient texts through a feminist lens, and Jewish Plant Magic with The Hebrew Priestess Institute. Currently based in Oakland, CA, Mia was born in Winnipeg, MB, to the daughter of a goalie for the Winnipeg Jewish Men’s Hockey League. Shortly after her 41st birthday -- after never having played hockey before — she received the Divine calling to follow in her father’s footsteps and learn to become a goaltender. This sculpture explores the magic of this brutal, hyper-focused and fully embodied practice and proposes that goaltending exists in a mystical realm where healing and deep understanding can be reached. The body of the goalie is cast in pulped garlic skins and polyurethane. Mia is interested in exploring the tension between these two materials. Garlic is a powerful, protective plant used within Ashkenazi diet and medicine. Polyurethane can be traced back to the laboratories of German chemists in World War II who used hydrogen cyanide to create products for the Nazi war machine. These products included industrial polyurethane as well as Zyklon B, which was the gas used in the gas chambers. The goalie is suspended within a deconstructed net, also cast in pulped garlic within a steel Merkaba. The Merkaba is an ancient Kabbalistic geometric form that represents a trans-dimensional chariot. It is understood as a vehicle that transports us from the material world to the spiritual world. Tragically, the name Merk-aba is also used contemporarily by the Israeli Occupation Forces for their newest tanks that are currently carrying out a horrific genocide in Gaza. For the artist, the practice of becoming a goaltender offers a multitude of metaphors in regard to healing, to mothering, to finding connection with ancestors, to submitting, and accessing spiritual salvation within the Jewish Diaspora.

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32 pulp Miya Turnbull, 2000. Photo courtesy of the artist. miya turnbullPhoto by Nanne Springer, 2023.

pulp 33 Miya Turnbull is a multi-disciplinary visual artist of mixed Japanese Canadian ancestry. She graduated from the University of Le-thbridge, AB, with a B.F.A. and currently lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, N.S.) She works with many different mediums but is primarily a mask-artist, focusing on self portraits. She uses her Photo-Mask technique to make life-like representations of her face, often distorting and manipulating her image in various ways, which she then wears as a ‘false face’ or ‘second skin’, as a way to explore identity. She has exhibited her masks, photos, and videos in galleries across Canada and internationally, and most recently a solo show at Acadia University Art Gallery in Nova Scotia. Her artwork has been on the cover of four magazines: Visual Arts News (Atlantic Canada), Art Reveal (Germany), Masks Literary Magazine (Columbia College Chicago Library), and The Bulletin/Geppo (Vancouver), as well as featured on digital platforms such as Vogue (Thailand), Planted Journal (Italy), Gata Magazine (Japan), Oficina Palimpses-tus (Brazil), The Perfect Magazine (UK), and Based Istanbul (Turkey). Miya’s artwork was researched and presented at the Royal Anthropological Institute in Bristol, UK (2021) by Dr. Nataliya Tchermalykh (University of Geneva), and her masks were used in a short film in France called Nô Feminist, directed by Aïssa Maïga, which premiered at the 75th Cannes Film Festival (2022). Miya has been very fortunate to receive the support of Arts N.S. and the Canada Council for the Arts, which has allowed her artwork to flourish.

34 pulp self portrait masks (2018-2023) Papier mâché, paint, collaged photographs My masks are three-dimensional self-portraits -- a combination of photography, sculpture, and collage. I am drawing from the traditional uses of masks worn for disguise, transformation and protection, as well as a metaphor for persona, archetypes and identity. I use photo elements within my masks to create an uncanny resemblance, albeit often altered, as well as to capture and present multiple iterations of my ‘self’. Each different self-portrait is a way I can explore variations, my experiences, perceptions, inner world and my mixed Japanese Canadian heritage, making these variation visible, tangible and wearable. Ironically, I am placing my likeness on the front of the mask at the same time concealing my face behind it. I can then manipulate how you see me and reveal only certain parts of me. I’m particularly interested in the liminal space between defined margins; private vs. public (what we present to the world and what we hide); ‘beauty’ vs. ‘grotesque’ (shifting or blurring the line between); and bi-racial identity (duality and ‘in-between-ness’). Working with my face repeatedly over time has allowed me to examine myself from an outside perspective, and to separate myself from physical appearances, which is often how we are defined and labelled, especially at first glance. I am very interested in distorting and mis-aligning my features, contrasting the surface vs. the shape of the masks and using the concave inside space of the masks as a way to differentiate and create tension between the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ persona. My sculptures, origami, photographs, and video are all extensions of my mask work. I fold up or re-shape myself into different configurations that aren’t possible in reality. Expanding my practice towards more interaction and embodiment of the masks showcases the transformational powers when my body and energy bring them to life. My goal is to create images where I appear somewhat fragmented or creature-like, unrecognis-able, beyond physical capabilities or outside of myself. Many people can relate to wearing masks, not just the literal ones during Covid, but in our interactions and daily lives. I implore viewers to reflect on authenticity within themselves, to expand our ideals and definition of the ‘norm’ and to question why different masks and images might evoke different responses, since they are all ‘extensions’ of myself. I also want to express the beauty, as well as the resilience and fragility of the human body. I am attempting to continuously hone in on the transitory nature of identity; to reveal and embody something previously hidden with each variation. My aim is to engage viewers to see themselves in my work, even though it is my image being depicted repeatedly. As a group of self-portraits, I hope the viewer looks deeper and sees a part of me in all, or perhaps in-between all of them.

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36 pulp susan andrews grace Photo by Jan Kozlowski, 2008.

pulp 37 Susan Andrews Grace’s visual art conceptually echoes and hon-ours textile tradition; it usually comes from the crucible of family as institution, in a non-unquestioning manner. Her art is often fueled by a political and historical approach to feminine consciousness and concerns itself with what is invisible. She has exhibited her works mostly in public galleries since 1986. Andrews Grace is also a poet and teacher of creative writing. Her sixth book is Hypatia’s Wake, released by Inanna Publications, (York University, Toronto, 2022). She holds a B.A. (philosophy) from the University of Saskatchewan and an M.F.A. (creative writing) from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

38 pulp Snow and Ink (2024) Papier caché, rags, recycled paper, wood pulp, bamboo, silk, paper yarn & string, wasp paper, rubble, wire, concrete Writing, in a strange twist, gave birth to the technology of paper-making. A proliferation of publication in mid-fifteenth century Europe after the invention of the Gutenberg press created great demand for paper to print bibles in the vernacular and revolutionary tracts in France and America. Papers had been made in Asia for over a thousand years but for art and poetry on scrolls. This rise in papermaking parallels colonization of North and South America. A turning point was the discovery by René Antoine Ferchault de Réamur (born in late 1600s), who had trav-elled to America, that wasps made their paper from wood. He was in America after the Battle of Gettysburg when ragmen were digging up graves of soldiers to take the clothes off their corpses. He wrote: “The wasp seems to teach us a means of overcoming these difficulties.” Snow and Ink employs materials used in paper making throughout history: rags, recycled paper, wood pulp, bamboo, silk. It also recycles rubble of wire and concrete, from the deconstruction of my 50 year old, sagging deck. I use a technique I call papier caché which hides/cachés bits of ink on paper in nests cast in cloth, paper yarn, paper string, and found wasp paper. The nests are held in space by constructions of bamboo, handmade soft rope, and deck rubble. The precar-ity of these structures mirrors the present environmental and geopolitical situation. The wall panels, part of a larger series of works about weather, carry these themes further: composed with rags, hiding calligraphic marks on paper, recycling found wasp paper as well as the use of rubble. Throughout the history of papermaking, whole families worked at paper mills. They suffered from submersion in cold water and neurological disorders from chemicals used to bleach pulp made of bloody, shitty, stinky rags or brown wood pulp to make white paper. My grandad, Walter E. Cavanagh, worked for MacMillan Bloedel & Powell River most of his adult life and my mother, Mary Elizabeth Cavanagh, spent her ‘gap year’ (graduated high school too young to enter nursing school) during the Second World War as the first woman chemist at the pulp and paper mill. They both died of Parkinson’s Disease. Snow and Ink is dedicated to their memory.

39pulpPhoto by J. Addington, 2024.